Total Solar Eclipse - March 2006

Meteosat-8 image

Here is a 4:1 resized image from EUMETSAT
Meteosat-8 satellite, taken at
09:45 on 2006 Mar 29. The image has been processed using my GeoSatSignal
software to combine the visible channel and thermal channel data to produce this
false-colour image. For a short period, there is also a full-resolution
version (2.4MB) of the same image available to download.

An Artefact?

Mike McCaw e-mailed me and said he had noticed an artefact on
the 0845 and 0900 images. This appears to be some sort of solar reflection
from an area of water as part of the river Congo tributaries, but it is
unusual to see an area of water sufficiently still to cause this. So
perhaps it's a solar intrusion (direct sunlight getting past the optics onto the
detector), but it does look awfully like it is related to the river system.
What surprises me about this image is the apparent brightness of the reflection
- normally the surface of water is not still enough to make it into a flat
reflector!

Many thanks for an interesting image. We have seen this
effect a few times (see also Congo image from Jochen Kerkmann,
below), but of course it is more dramatic around the "fringe" of the eclipse.
It is, as you rightly say, sunglint off the Congo river /lakes, the intensity and shape of
reflection being modified depending upon the local roughness of the water surface.
It is quite interesting to prepare an animation loop comprising a few images just prior to and immediately
after this feature is seen, and one actually sees the glint reflected from many rivers and lakes, travelling from east to west across this
central African region.

Movie from Meteosat-8 images

Using the GeoSatSignal
software, a set of Meteosat-8 images like the one above have been combined to
make an animation of the view of this eclipse from space. There are
(currently) two versions available